Get Through This
by Victoria-Eliza
Summary: C/B. "Waldorf, if you were to go and get hit by a car tomorrow morning, I would be with you at the gates of Hell not three hours later." He states coolly, barely acknowledging her flinching at the even tone in which he told of their deaths.


**Disclaimer: **I most certainly do not own Gossip Girl or any of it's affiliated characters, etc.  
**Word Count: **About 4,000  
**Pairings: **C/B  
**Characters****: **Chuck, Blair, OC

**A/N -- **I started this a few months ago and it was almost complete, but I couldn't find the time to finish it until today so sorry if it's a little mixed up. I was running on different emotions back when I first started writing it, and I think that it's gone on a bit of a different track since I came back. It's also a little light at first, which I actually did intend, but gets steadily darker as you continue. But not too much, I don't think. Dark isn't really my thing, I don't think.

On another note; my life has been crazy these past few weeks what with going back to school and studying for Pre's and all, so I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to respond to those reviews on my last fic. I promise that I'll get to it as soon as possible.

**_--_**

"Eight months, eleven days." Blair muses morosely, swirling her cocktail around in her glass as she gives the bartender a wry smirk. "Longer then most people though it'd last."

He grins back at her, unashamedly checking out the cleavage that was on display to him as he helps her celebrate her newly single status. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, instead knocking back the end of her fifth glass. He hands her another without question, and she decides that maybe he isn't so bad after all. Anyone else would have cut her off twenty minutes ago, especially at the rate she was going.

"I mean, it's not like I thought we were going to be together _forever_." She continues, examining her fingernails closely for any sign of a smudge; she found several.

She knew that that so-called beautician was inept – she'd certainly never be going there again, that's for sure.

"I just never expected it to end so soon..." she trails off, looks at the bartender – Ewan, was it? Horrible name. What was his mother thinking? – with a pout. "If I were your girlfriend, you'd never dump me, would you?"

"Of course I wouldn't, babe," he assures her, glancing at his watch. "As a matter of fact, I get off in ten minutes, maybe we could--"

She cuts him off, slamming her hand down onto the bar and nodding emphatically. "Exactly my point! I'm _Blair Waldorf, _surely he sees that? Sure, I may not be absolutely stunning like my blonde bimbo of a best friend-" a pause, "-sorry, S. But I am still gorgeous, am I not?"

A lecherous smile alights his face and he gives her yet another once-over, "No complaints here, that's for sure!"

She pouts again, because if it had been _him_ that leering smile would have been dashing and sexy, and his compliment would have been much more appreciative – as it turned out, what she got was just downright pervy.

But then again, his smile _was_ rather adorable in the cute, little-lost-puppy-dog way that Nate's had always been. And his hair was just the right shade of mousy brown – not in the least reminiscent of _his_ – and tousled in that artfully messy look that she's always secretly loved...

What would be the harm, really? A teeny-weeny one night stand wouldn't _completely_ ruin her reputation, and it was long overdue... Serena had slept with more people in the past four months then Blair had in her entire lifetime, wasn't it about time she evened the playing field?

And then she remembers that he was a lowly bartender at 1Oak who was looking much too eagerly at that clock; there was enthusiasm and then there was _desperation._

Still, it would almost be worth it to see the look on _his_ face the next morning as he was greeted with the sight of her draped all over some guy... (photos and documentation courtesy of Gossip Girl, of course)

Decision made, she quickly finishes her drink and drags Ewan out from behind the bar, ignoring his yelps of pain as she tries to move him through solid oak counter-top. She resists the urge to snicker when he still looks over-eager, even while grimacing and swearing. She allows him no time to gather his stuff or say goodbye to his colleagues, but has the good sense to dawdle when they finally reach the street outside. Making sure that she is in full view of any potential cameras and/or P.I.s (because she wouldn't put it past the Mother-Chucker) she casually plants one on him, wincing as he automatically sticks his tongue halfway down her throat. She lets him go so far as to slide his fingers up and down her stomach, before subtly, but sternly, pushing his hands back down to where a gentleman should have them, relishing in the clicking noises of numerous cell-phones taking pictures.

When she is confident that she's put on enough of a show, she pulls away and pretends to whisper something breathily in his ear, posing for photographs one last time before dragging him into the limousine with her by the scruff of his shirt. Ignoring Arthur's disapproving glower, she lowers the partition and ensures that no sound can escape.

The second she turns back to Ewan, he attacks her with his lips, pinning her down against the cool leather of the seat and grappling with the straps of her dress. Her mouth opens in shock, and he takes the opportunity to cram his tongue back down again. The feeling isn't _entirely_ unpleasant, and so she lets him get his kicks for a few seconds before tugging at his hair and motioning for him to get off of her. She narrows her eyes when still he persists, and whacks him not-so-gently with her Prada purse.

"Hey!"

She glares at him, pushing him fully off of her as she sits up. "When I say enough, I mean _enough_. Understood?" She gasps as she spots a tear in the seam of her dress, and he is forced to duck as she tries to assault him with her handbag again. "My dress! This was brand new – Chuck--"

Blair stops mid-sentence, cursing herself for mentioning _his_ name when she had sworn she never would again. She allows herself a minute to dwell on the hurt that even thinking about it brings, before ploughing onwards, "_I mean_ someone who is of no importance, only bought it for me last week!"

Ewan flashes her his dopey grin again, enjoying the way her cheeks flush when she's angry. "If they're of no importance, what does it matter?"

She blinks in surprise, mulls it over. "Excellent point." She waves a hand at him, sinking back into the seat, closing her eyes as his lips find her pale flesh again. "Proceed."

**_--_**

He gets as far as second base by the time the limo settles to a halt outside her building, and her dress has long since been discarded. Sitting up, she rolls her eyes as she glances down at his pants and sees that her lack of participation hasn't deterred him in any way. Slipping the straps of her slip back up her shoulder, she straightens her pearls and puts her stilettos back on, perfectly aware that she has just given Ewan an amazing view of her thighs and that he is now salivating on top of the leather.

"Down, boy." Grabbing his hand, she quickly pulls him out of the limo and into the street, pretending not to see Arthur on the phone as she waves goodbye to him through the window. "C'mon. We've got the penthouse to ourselves, Dorota's staying at Vanya's tonight."

"Who's Dorota?" He asks as she nods to the doorman on their way in. "Your sister?"

She resists the urge to roll her eyes again, "No, Dorota's my maid."

"Oh."

They lapse into a semi-comfortable silence for the duration of the elevator journey, Blair impatiently checking her watch and mentally calculating how long it takes to get from DC to New York at this time of night, and Ewan content with ogling her legs. By the time they reach her floor, she knows to expect _him_ just after four AM. If, of course, he left as soon as he saw the first round of photos – which, knowing his possessive streak, he most certainly did.

"My room is up the stairs and to the right, first door." She informs him, making her way into the kitchen in search of more liquor, calling over her shoulder as an afterthought, "Don't touch anything."

Rooting around in one of the cupboards, she finds a single bottle of champagne and curses herself for not thinking to re-stock her alcohol supplies. Dorota was pregnant, so any chance of her drinking anything stronger than coffee was out of the window, and since her mother had abandoned the place in favor of Paris, it was up to Blair to consider such things.

Sighing, she replaces the bottle and makes do with what she already has left in her system, hoping that it would be sufficient to get her through the next three hours. When she does finally make her way upstairs, she finds a half-naked man laying on her bed. Shuddering at his forwardness, she quickly leaves the room again and returns with a duvet and a pillow in hand, laying them out on the floor of her bedroom.

"You wanna do this on the floor?" He looks confused, and she is once again reminded of Nate's puppy-dog features. She just raises a brow until he dutifully moves from her bed to the make-shift mattress, spreading out and making himself comfortable. "Babe?"

She ignores him as she crawls into her bed, wrinkling her nose up at the sheets where his body had lay, but too lazy to get up change them. Reaching for her eye-mask, she switches off the lamp and leaves them in complete darkness.

She hears the rustle of sheets, and a heavy weight settling back down on the bed. Without removing her mask, she snaps her fingers in the direction of the floor. "Stay."

"But I thought we were gonna..." His voice is whiny, and she can't fathom how he could possibly be so oblivious.

"Yes, I know what you _thought_. But, I'm telling you now, it's not happening. So please be a dear and return to your mattress." Realizing she sounds a little harsh and that he is in danger of leaving, she adds in a sultry voice, "Besides, good things come to those who wait. You may just get a little... _surprise_ mid-way through the night."

The weight is lifted from her mattress, and she smirks into the darkness as he quickly darts back onto the floor again.

"Good boy." She murmurs fondly, rolling onto her side and attempting to get a few hours sleep before the drama started.

**_--_**

"BLAIR!"

The second she hears his thundering voice echoing up through the apartment she jumps up quickly. Heart pounding, she tears off her mask and her dressing gown, leaving her only in her flimsy slip. Tussling up her hair so that she gives the 'just-had-sex' look, she dives for the floor and wraps her arms around the still fast-asleep Ewan.

Heart pounding in her chest, she breathes heavily, eyes wide in anticipation. She hears the pounding of feet on the stairs, flinches as her door is flung open with a bang. Calling on her years of acting experience as the perfectly innocent UES princess, she sits up and blinks her eyes at the sudden influx of light into the room. Yawning loudly, she pretends to look taken aback by Chuck Bass' presence in her bedroom.

"Bass?" She sounds reasonably sleepy, but her voice hitches slightly when he fixes her with a glare that would turn any other woman into a quivering wreck. Luckily for her – she wasn't just any other woman. "What are you doing here?"

He doesn't reply, eyes focused on the man who was now stirring beside her, eyes fluttering open and blinking confusedly. Blair bites her lip as the covers are pushed back further, and Ewan is revealed to be dressed only in his underwear. She awaits Chuck's yells of fury, his threats and his dark promises, and can't help but smirk slightly at the pure adrenaline of it all. The smirk falls from her face seconds later when he meets her gaze.

"Enjoyed yourself, have you?" Chuck's voice is quiet, flat and emotionless. He walks a bit further into the room, nose turning up in disgust as he kicks aside Ewan's discarded jeans.

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I have." Her voice is equally as monotonous as she fights away any primal urges that she feels to soothe the heartache and the pain that it on his face. Her voice is sharper as she reminds him, "We're broken up, Chuck. I don't owe you anything."

He narrows his eyes, looks her over with the same amount of disgust as he did the pants. "I'm not disputing that. What I am questioning is your complete lack of class and self-respect. Since when has the name Blair Waldorf been synonymous with _slut_?"

That one hurt, she can't deny it. "Must have been around the same time Blair Waldorf started dating Chuck Bass."

They stare each other down for a few minutes before Ewan finally wakens completely, rubbing at his eyes blearily as he sits up. "Whaz going on? Who's he?"

"Nobody." Blair replies quickly, eyes not moving from Chuck's. "Nobody at all." She breaks the connection, standing as she blinks away tears.

Chuck just shakes his head, nodding darkly at the guy's shirt and pants. "Take your things and get out."

Ewan glances at the brunette girl who was standing beside him, tears running down her cheeks as she looked down vulnerably. He moves his hand to grasp hers. "Hey, you okay?"

If at all possible, Chuck's face darkens further and he takes another few menacing steps forward, speaking in a hushed voice. "You have ten seconds to get your hands off of her, gather your things and get out, otherwise I will personally make sure that you are never seen or heard from again. Understood?"

"I'm not leaving you alone with her," Ewan says bravely, standing up and positioning himself in front of Blair protectively. "It's obvious she's terrified of you. God knows what'd happen."

Chuck flinches back as though struck, and he moves to the other side of the room, resting his hands on her armoire. "I would _never_ hurt her. She knows that."

Blair clears her throat, looks at Ewan blankly. "You should go. Now."

"But..."

"Now!"

Grumbling under his breath, he does as told, wisely choosing to wait until he reached the elevator to tie his laces and to button his shirt. When he's gone, Chuck speaks.

"Did you sleep with him?"

Her voice is shaky, "Does it matter?"

"Blair. Did. You. Sleep. With. Him?" He grinds out through gritted teeth, hands clenching into fists as he contemplates all the different things he's going to do to the guy if it turned out that he touched her.

"No." She straightens up, her voice stronger as she quotes with spite, "_But I might as well have_."

The excuse that Dan had given Serena when she had found out about he and Georgina Sparks; it was the final straw that had broken their relationship.

He exhales deeply, not daring to look at her as he attempts to calm down. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't owe you any explanation." She can't help but add more, even as she curses herself for her weakness. "Besides, _you_ broke up with _me_. Not the other way around. It's obvious that you don't want me anymore, is so wrong of me to want to move on?"

"_Don't want you anymore_?" His voice is incredulous, and she can see the shock as it flits across his face. He shakes his head at her, eyes burning with suppressed emotion. "You know why I broke it off with you, Blair. And it has nothing to do with not _wanting_ you."

Chuck walks to her bed and sits down, placing his face in his hands. "Fuck it, Blair. How the hell do you always manage to do this?"

"_Me_?" Blair shrieks, tears running streams down her cheeks. "I'm not the one who ended it and then fled the state!"

"No, you're the one who made me have to end it!" He yells back, raising his head so that he meets her eyes. "You're the one who is so Goddamn stupid so that you can't see what you're doing to yourself – doing to me!"

She sobs loudly, and all of the anger seems to drain from her body so that she is only left with pain and heartache. "I had a _relapse_, Chuck. It's not my fault, I couldn't help it. I _can't_ help it!"

"Don't you think that I know that?" He spits at her, "You think that I don't know why you did it? Why you were feeling insecure? _I know_. And don't you even believe for a second that I blame you for it."

"Then why did you say those things to me? Why did you leave me when I needed you most? I would have _never_ left you."

"Because," his voice cracks and he finally allows the tears to fall. "I'm not as _strong_ as you, Blair. I can't... I can't stand by and watch you destroy yourself. Watch as you make yourself sicker and sicker. I can't do it. I love you too damn much. Don't you understand that?"

He looks at her brokenly. "Do you want know what Carter Baizen said to me once, right before he hightailed it out of town? It was just after your breakdown, right after the two of you..." He doesn't finish, letting the end of his sentence linger in the room before pressing on.

"He told me, that I should have known better than to have fallen in love with you. Known better than to have given all of me to you. He said that you were dangerous – the single most powerful person he'd ever met."

"Why would he say that?"

Chuck smiles slightly. A broken, bitter smile that had graced his lips far too often. He doesn't reply to her question directly, merely states; "If you go down, we all go down. It's that simple. You have the power to not only break yourself, but Nate and Serena and I as well. Carter told me that the three of us should have known better than to invest all we had into a girl that was so broken herself. And he was right."

"I don't understand..."

"I mean, Waldorf, that if you were to go and get hit by a car tomorrow morning, I would be with you at the gates of Hell not three hours later." He states coolly, barely acknowledging her flinching at the even tone in which he told of their deaths.

"Serena would hold out a little longer; a year, maybe more. But she too would fall. You know that she would. Without you to bring her back from the brink? Without me to wipe away all of her scandals until she came out squeaky clean? It would only be a matter of time until she got in too deep to come back.

"Nathaniel, now, he might get lucky. He loved you once upon a time, sure. But your death alone wouldn't break him. Coupled with mine, however, he might be a little lost for a few years. But factor in Serena? And he's as much a goner as the rest of us. I'd give him three years. Five, tops."

"Chuck..."

"You never know, he might even make it into Heaven. He's been a good boy all of his life, for the most part. The rest of us though? We haven't a chance." He laughs dryly, not meeting her eyes as he continues with his musings. "But, hey, at least we'll be together."

Blair just gapes at him, wonders how he can be quite so casual as he speaks of something so terrible. "You've... you've actually considered this? What you'd do if I died."

"Considered it? No. But, I'll admit, Carter's little proclamations got me thinking, back when you and Nathaniel were trying to play happy families again. It was rather reassuring, knowing that I wouldn't be alone in my suicide attempts." He blinks suddenly, giving her a wry smile. "I've really got to stop reading those ridiculous vampire books that you have, I'm afraid I'm channeling that Cullen guy."

"How can you... how can you joke about stuff like that?" She asks, looking at him in bewilderment. "Suicide? That night when you were teetering on the ledge was the worst of my life!"

He stiffens, "This from the girl who views emptying the contents of her stomach into a porcelain bowl a recreational sport. Never mind the fact that it could lead to cardiac arrest and even _death_."

Blair eyes meet his, flashing mockingly as she says, "Nice to know you can use a computer, Bass. Where'd you learn that, Wikipedia?"

"Your case file, actually. I read all about it. Dr. Sherman is very precise." He tells her, watching her reactions carefully. "Started when you were fourteen, continued until Serena finally noticed almost a year and a half later. She told your parents, and they took it from there. You had weekly appointments with him right up until your father left for France, after which you canceled all sessions. Since then, you appear sporadically in his office, phoning him only when you relapse or think you are about to."

Her eyes fill with tears again, and he quickly folds his arms around her, clinging on even when she tries to push him away. She finally settles, and he whispers the final bit of information into her hair as she buries her head in his chest.

"The last time you called him was New Year's Eve, last year. It was the first time you'd had to in over a year." His voice is husky, and he closes his eyes and breaths in her scent as he plants a soft kiss upon her forehead. "I know you, Blair Waldorf. Every last detail, whether you want me to or not. And I love you, no matter what."

**--**

"You left me." Blair says dully, some time later.

Dawn had since broken over the Upper East Side, but neither of them had even attempted to sleep. Instead, they lay side by side on her bed. Not talking, just holding each other and staring at the blue wall across from them.

"I know." He replies quietly, entwining his hand with hers. "I'm sorry."

She blinks back yet another set of tears, "I thought that I'd lost you. That you were done with me, forever. That's... that's why I brought that guy here. I figured that even if you didn't love me anymore, you still wouldn't want to see me with anyone else. I thought that if I made you angry enough, I could get you to come home. To make you see that I still had a hold on you, no matter how small."

"I went to Washington to meet with a few people." He tells her in return. "As it turns out Jack had more than a few dodgy dealings with some powerful people over a decade ago. Bart bought them off, and in return Jack agreed to move to Australia to save a scandal on Bass Industries. My P.I. rang me with the details, and I knew I had to act fast if I wanted to have something concrete on him. I wasn't running away, Blair. I was always going to come back. I just... I needed to get him out of our lives for good, first. I needed to make sure that he could never hurt us – hurt _you_ – ever again."

Blair nods her head slowly, and he steadies himself to ask the question that is burning at him and making it hard to breath.

"I need to know, Blair. Are we going to get through this?"

She closes her eyes, squeezing his hand firmly. "I'll call Dr. Sherman later today." Is all she says in reply, before finally allowing herself to succumb to the emotional exhaustion and fatigue that had been gripping at her for hours.

**---FIN---**

**A/N -- **In case anyone is confused (and you might well be, now that I look over this), essentially; Blair's bulimia makes a reappearance around about the same time Jack Bass does, and Chuck can't handle the idea of Blair being broken enough to revert into her old ways, so he basically tells her that "he can't do this anymore" and leaves for DC. She thinks that he's running away from her because he's disgusted, and so she gets photographed with a guy in the hope that he would get jealous and come home. Really though, just after their heartbreaking fight, Chuck gets a call from his PI telling him some dirt on Jack and so he goes to check it out. He comes back once he sees the pictures on Gossip Girl and, well, I think that the rest is pretty clear.

Please leave a review telling me what you thought, it really means a lot.


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